Friday, October 21, 2011

It just occurred to me today, that we talk about "falling in love". It's rarely the tacky sounding, "feeling the love", or the wordy "experiencing love" or a simple "I love him/her/you".

First, why do we fall into it? Is it an abyss that pulls us downward? Or a mythical ocean of bliss?
Then follows my second point, if someone is out of love, that must mean that they climbed out of the abyss, or stopped swimming in an ocean of bliss.

pic credit - graur razvan ionut; freedigitalphotos.net

Where do we go when we "fall in love"? Where are we when we're "in love"? We make some very permanent choices/changes when we're in these special zones. People seem to fall out of these zones easily and the choices remain.

Then there is the celebrity sounding, "We fell in love all over again!" So we fall into the abyss/are swimming in the mythical ocean/are back in our special place again? Having left once, we're ready to run back in, to feel all there is to feel, ready to make some more choices. (And then there's Alicia Keys song about "I keep on falling in and out...of love...with you!" Gosh that must be tiring!)

And about those choices. I wonder if that's why we fall in love. Perhaps it moves us toward doing definitive things that alter our landscape completely. Things that need the extra energy/heat/charge to happen. That extra unifying energy that propels us toward some soul mission, without which, our existence could truly be about our next latte/pedicure appointment/bake sale. Nothing wrong with all that. Even that needs a fueling spark.

From the many scientific/deeper philosophical/esoteric explanations, there are centers activated from feeling that ocean tide of emotion. I wonder if that makes us braver, more certain and enables us to live with more faith.Where does that initial spark come from? The thing that makes us fall/swim in love?

Could it be that we fall into our purpose? Something about the person we behold, that makes us believe that they'll lead us to where we need to go? Is it our purpose sort of resonating with the other person's purpose? Corny, I know. But still. So both identify a way to fulfill some deep mission, and perhaps that awareness is the first step toward "falling in love."

So when we're out of love, as per my hare-brained, sleepless at midnight theory, we've lost our purpose? When the purpose for remaining in that ocean of bliss/abyss is gone? And so we extricate ourselves, trying to find another person/self ignite that spark? But then what about those many choices and little lives? What do they do once our purpose has ceased to exist? What happens to their mini-purposes that trustingly took shape in proximity to us?

So when people say, I love you but am not in love with you, they don't want to be in that blissful ocean/abyss together anymore. They want another swim buddy. With their not so special partners, they want to merely hang about on the shore, like they would with the rest of their "loved ones."

I am writing another book, and of course, people fall in love. And that made me stop and think about what on earth must happen to us all at some point or the other. We throw caution to the wind and grow into ourselves, I suppose.

It also makes me wonder, how such a wild emotion can be curbed within the confines of relationships decreed as legal/proper/binding by civilized society? And if it stays curbed, how strong was it to begin with?

It's certainly worth every moment, at least to me. I can't imagine that the prospect of having to swim to shore/climb out of an abyss should keep any of us from reaching our invisible purposes with a loved one. Kind of like not eating because you're going to be hungry anyway, tomorrow. Or giving up on life because we're all going to die anyway.

So from that it must follow, that falling out of love must be expected, and our time on the shore, that will be loving, must be a break before another glorious swim. And our time on the shore is fortified by the memory of bliss.